Even in 2009 — during the final months of the country’s civil war — only 736 people sought asylum in Australia, according to Immigration Department figures.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has stood by a proposal to send Sri Lankans immediately home without setting foot on Australia soil, floated by opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop at the weekend, saying it was important to deny people smugglers a product to sell.

‘‘Sri Lanka had a civil war. The civil war is long over,’’ Mr Abbott said.

But two exiled Sri Lankan journalists have warned that ethnic strife is still rampant.

‘‘There is no shelling now, there is no bombing, but the situation as far as human rights and democratic rights are concerned, nothing has changed,’’ said Bashana Abeywardane, a reporter from the Sinhalese majority who fled Sri Lanka to Europe in 2006 and feels unable to return home.

‘‘Even though the war has stopped, the conflict has even deepened and the discriminatory policies that caused the war have continued,’’ he said.

Lokeesan Anputhurai, a Tamil who reported during the final days of fighting but fled in June 2009, said through an interpreter that a final peace could be won only by a political solution.

Labor has seized on the proposal to reject people from Sri Lanka automatically, accusing the Coalition of breaching the same refugee conventions it invoked to reject Labor’s proposed asylum-seeker swap with Malaysia.

But opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said Labor’s claim was a ‘‘bit rich’’, having itself suspended the processing of Sri Lankan asylum seekers in the run-up to the 2010 election and claiming then the situation in Sri Lanka had changed.

The Immigration Department said 4491 Sri Lankans had arrived by boat in Australia since 2008 — and so far 878 of those had been granted refugee protection. Only one Sri Lankan has been deported this year and one was deported in 2011.

Daniel Flitton is senior correspondent for The Age covering foreign affairs and politics. He is a former intelligence analyst for the Australian government and was at one-time a university lecturer specialising in international relations.